?Dividing and waning?: Openness and Incompleteness in the Poetic lifeof William Carlos Williams

Richard Gray suggests that on reading Williams?s 1927 poem ?YoungSycamore? the reader is left with ?feelings of openness andincompleteness utterly appropriate in a world governed by change.? Theforthcoming conference, sponsored by the William Carlos WilliamsSociety, and hosted by the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University inFrankfurt, aims to explore how qualities of ?openness andincompleteness? in Williams?s work and thought help breakdown the imageof a poet concerned exclusively with his American locale. Theconference thus invites papers on a broad range of topics which mayinclude, for example, the openness inherent in Williams?s conception ofknowledge, the importance to him of foreign traditions of art andwriting, his impact on poetry outside America.

The format is that of a round-table conference, as opposed to paperpresentations and panels of talks. Each participants? paper (between10-15 pages) will be circulated in advance of the meeting, and at theconference each participant will be allotted one hour within which timethey will introduce their work for 10-15 minutes. This will leave ampletime for questions and discussion. The main conference will take placeon Friday and Saturday, with a reception and guest speaker to openprocedings on Thursday evening. The guest speaker for this year?sconference will be August Kleinzahler, who will present a paper andtalk about the importance of Williams to his own poetry.

Please send a proposal of 200 words outlining both the aims of yourpaper and how it fits in with the general rubric of the conference. Ashort CV would also be appreciated. Proposals should be sent to IanCopestake at the following address no later than April 1st 2007:copestake_at_rz.uni-frankfurt.de